Computer based systems that allow the creation and use of electronic models of teeth to design some types of dental appliances have been developed over time. Electronic models of dental appliances are designed to fit within the patient's mouth and then fabricated to produce the appliance or a pattern used in casting the appliance.
Dental appliances include, by way of illustration, restorations, bridges, and implants. Restorations include, by way of illustration, replacements for single teeth including incisors, molars, and pre-molars. Dental appliances are designed to mount to either natural teeth or implanted teeth substitutes. For the sake of convenience, this disclosure will use the term “preparation site” to refer to a site at which a dental appliance is to be mounted, regardless of whether the site is a natural tooth or an implanted tooth substitute.
In some prior systems, an electronic model for a dental appliance is designed to complement an electronic image of a preparation site. The electronic image of the preparation site can be generated based on a patient's actual preparation site (e.g., through intra-oral imaging) or a casting thereof (e.g., a dental study cast). In an embodiment, the electronic model of the dental appliance is generated based on an electronic image of a neighboring tooth. The electronic image is then edited to fit on the preparation site.
In another embodiment, a standard electronic model is obtained from an image library. The electronic model can be edited manually using an interactive computer graphics program. For example, sections of the electronic model can be selected and dragged into desired shapes using standard graphic editing techniques. New lines or sections can be added and undesired sections can be deleted from the electronic model. Such editing can be time-consuming and depends on the skill of the technician to create a visually pleasing dental appliance that will fit the space.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.